


Barely There

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (just a little), Angst, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Dean is so in love with Cas, Endverse Castiel Loves Endverse Dean Winchester, Endverse Dean Winchester Loves Endverse Castiel, Fluff, I might write a little second chapter idk, Love, M/M, enjoy, literally copy-pasted, some of this is straight out of my other Endverse fic, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 20:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20377453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: Older Him ran a hand through his hair. “Um… in this world, we don’t have room for feelings. We don’t have the space to be, y’know,in love.”Those two words hit Dean like a freight train.In love?He wasn’tin lovewith Cas.…But he wasfallingin love.





	Barely There

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 60th work on the Archive!!!!
> 
> Enjoy.

This Castiel was sitting on the floor of his cabin in a circle of women. He had a full beard, which was weird and kinda jarring for Dean, and his whole cabin smelled like incense and was decorated with beads and other hippie shit.

“So, in this way, we're each a fragment of total perception – just, uh, one compartment in that dragonfly eye of group mind. Now, the key to this total, shared perception – it’s, um, it's surprisingly physical,” he was saying. He noticed Dean out of the corner of his eye as he was pushing his way through the bead curtain. “Oh, excuse me ladies. I think I need to confer with our fearless leader for a minute. Why don’t you go wash up for the orgy?”

The women smiled at him and started to leave. “You’re all so beautiful,” he murmured as they filed out.

“What are you, a hippie?” Dean demanded, sincerely confused and slightly disdainful.

“I thought you’d gotten over trying to label me,” Castiel muttered, stretching his arms.

Dean sighed. “Cas, we gotta talk.”

Cas suddenly stopped, eyes blown wide, and Dean didn’t miss the fact that his pupils were extremely dilated. “Woah,” he muttered. “Strange.”

“What?” Dean inquired.

“You are not… ‘you’. Not _now _you, anyway.”

“No! Yeah. Yes, exactly,” Dean breathed.

“What year are you from?” Castiel asked suspiciously.

“2009,” Dean answered.

“Who did this to you? Was it Zachariah?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

Dean recoiled in annoyance. “Oh, yeah, it’s friggin’ fascinating. Now why don’t you strap on your angel wings and fly me back to my page on the calendar?”

Castiel rubbed his forehead. “I wish I could just, uh, ‘strap on my wings’, but I’m sorry. No dice.”

Dean stared at him in shock. “What are you, stoned?”

Castiel laughed bitterly for a second, then replied, “uh, generally. Yeah.”

Dean couldn’t make his vocal cords work for a long moment. “What happened to you?” he finally asked with sad disgust.

“Life,” Castiel answered simply.

Dean didn’t say anything else, but he heard a car pulling up outside. He glanced out the huge window and saw a Jeep containing Other Him, so he hurried out. Castiel followed him.

Other Dean tossed one of his guys a beer before taking a swig of his own, and when the soldier turned his back, aimed his pistol at him.

“Hey. Hey, look out!” Normal Dean shouted, too late. 2014 Dean had already pulled the trigger and the soldier was already on the ground.

Future Dean turned just his head to look at Regular Dean and muttered, “damn it.” He turned back to address his men.

“I’m not gonna lie to you,” he told them, pointing one arm behind him as he spoke. “Me and him – it’s a pretty messed up situation we got going. But believe me, when you need to know something, you’ll know it. Until then, we all have work to do.”

Dean marveled at this older version’s ability to bark orders and other people’s attentiveness and willingness to listen to him. He hadn’t ever thought of himself as a leader, but here was living, breathing proof that he was capable of it.

Without meaning to, though, he twisted around to look at Castiel, to confirm that he was still standing there – and he was – which meant that Other Dean hadn’t been pointing at him. And holy shit, was that a shock. Because it hadn’t looked much like it, but he didn’t really know why that was the case… unless he did.

#~+~#

“So that’s it? That’s the Colt?” Risa asked, looking down at the thin-barreled and seemingly unassuming gun.

Other Dean nodded. “If anything can kill Lucifer, this is it.”

Risa nodded, still wearing somewhat of a bitter expression. “Great. Have we got anything that can _find_ Lucifer?”

Future Dean cocked his head ever so slightly to the side (making him remind Dean almost painfully of his best friend back in his own year), and inquired, “are you okay?”

Dean piped up for the first time from his spot in the corner. “Oh, we were in, uh, Jane’s cabin last night. And apparently we and… Risa have a ‘connection’.”

Dean’s doppleganger glared at him. “You want to shut up?” Dean raised his hands in surrender and the other guy continued. “We don’t have to find Lucifer. We know where he is. The demon we caught last week, he was one of the big guy’s entourage. He knew.”

“So a demon tells you where Satan’s gonna be and you just believe it?” Risa sounded skeptical.

“Oh, trust me, he wasn’t lying,” Other Dean assured her.

“And you know this how?” Risa muttered.

“Our fearless leader, I’m afraid, is all too well schooled in the art of getting to the truth,” Castiel informed her, not looking up from where he was tracing invisible lines into the table with his fingernail. It took Dean a second, but then enlightenment hit him like a brick between the eyes.

“_Torture_? Oh, so we’re – we’re torturing again. No, that’s – that’s good. Classy.”

Castiel laughed abruptly, and both Deans looked at him.

“What?” Other Castiel defended himself to Other Dean’s look. “I like ‘Past You’.”

2014 Dean rolled his eyes and smoothed the map out on the table. “Lucifer is here,” he said, pointing at a small red circle. “Now, I know the block and I know the building.”

Castiel leaned forward to look at it. “Oh, good – it’s right in the middle of a hot zone.”

“Crawling with Crotes, yeah,” Future Dean said resignedly almost before Castiel was even done. “You saying my plan is reckless?”

Dean – normal Dean – had no idea why they were so head-to-head, so aggressive to each other, but there was obviously something going on that he didn’t know about.

“Are you saying we, uh… walk in straight up the driveway, past all the demons and the Crotes, and we shoot the devil?”

Again, Other Dean answered before Castiel finished his sentence. “Yes.”

They really left no breathing room when they bounced conversation back and forth, did they?

“Okay. If you don’t like, uh, ‘reckless’, I could use ‘insouciant’, maybe.”

“Are you coming?” Future Dean demanded. Castiel took a deep breath in, like he was preparing himself for something.

“Of course,” he said at last, glancing at Normal Dean. “But why is _he?_ I mean, he’s you five years ago. If something happens to him, you’re gone, right?”

“He’s coming,” said Other Dean, in a tone that said that it was the end of the conversation.

“Okay,” Castiel muttered, looking like he wanted to fight it but didn’t have the energy, just knowing how stubborn Dean was. “Well, uh. I’ll get the grunts moving.” He stood and made to leave as Future Dean started to pack up the map.

“We’re loaded and on the road by midnight,” he ordered.

“All righty,” Castiel agreed as he pushed the door open. It swung shut behind him and suddenly Regular Dean was left alone with Futuristic Dean. He wasn’t sure how much he liked that.

“Why _are_ you taking me?” he asked, a little worried.

“Relax. You’ll be fine,” Future Dean assured him. “Zach’s looking after you, right?” He continued to put tools in his bag and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “fucking angelic douchebags.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Dean told his future self. “I wanna know what’s going on.” He paused for a second, then exhaled. “With you and Castiel.”

Other Dean looked up at him in surprise for a second, then said, “yeah, okay,” and walked around the table to stand face-to-face with Dean. He sighed. “Like I said earlier. He and I have a really messed up… arrangement, you might say.”

“You – what do you mean?”

Older Him ran a hand through his hair. “Um… in this world, we don’t have room for feelings. We don’t have the space to be, y’know, _in love_.”

Those two words hit Dean like a freight train. _In love? _He wasn’t _in love_ with Cas.

…But he was _falling_ in love.

“We just can’t do it. I don’t let myself love him the way that I want to, the way that I used to, because if I do, if I let myself be scared for him, I’m going to fucking die. I’m going to stop functioning altogether. Instead, I take him with me on almost every mission, just to have him near me, and on the rare occasion that I get him, I get him all to myself. None of that orgies and sharing-with-six-girls bullshit.”

Dean was frozen on the spot. “You and Castiel are…” He couldn’t come up with any word. ‘Dating’ didn’t work, because there wasn’t exactly time for the two of them to go out to dinner or watch a movie. ‘Fucking’ didn’t work, because it was a little more complicated than that and he’d just admitted that that was rare. And ‘together’ wasn’t really very accurate either.

Didn’t make a difference though, because the other man seemed to understand what he meant.

“Yeah.”

Dean almost recoiled – not in disgust, or fear, just surprise. “Oh.” Because that one word held so much pain, and regret, and remorse, more feeling than Dean had ever thought he could hear in his own voice. He didn’t realize he had that many feelings in him.

(Okay, that wasn’t quite true. He was an emotional bastard, he just was really, really good at pretending he wasn’t.)

It was silent for a moment, and then Future Dean spoke again. “Look, _Dean_. You still have an angel. You still have a _chance_. It took me too long to realize that I was in love with Cas. It doesn’t have to be too long for you. Just go back to when you came from and say ‘yes’ to Michael, because that’s the one way that you can fix this. That’s the only way that you can protect your Cas.”

He stared defiantly into Dean’s green eyes for a minute, and then he sighed. “But you won’t, ‘cause I didn’t. Because that’s just not us, is it?”

Dean felt the tension drain out of his body. He couldn’t say ‘yes’ to Michael. He couldn’t become a mindless, ruined vessel. He couldn’t let an archangel burn him out of his own skin. But he also couldn’t let this happen. This future, this reality. This… stoner husk of the man – _angel_ – that he was in love with back in 2009.

But then Other Dean informed him of something else, something that changed everything even further than it had already been changed.

“You want to know the real reason I’m taking you with me? You’re coming because I want you to see something. I want you to see our brother.”

“Sam?” he asked. “I thought you said he was dead.”

“Sam didn’t _die_ in Detroit,” Other Dean admitted. “I just said he didn’t make it.” He paused. “He said ‘yes’.”

“‘Yes’?” Dean repeated incredulously. After a second, it dawned on him. “Wait – you mean-”

“That’s right. The big ‘yes’. To the devil. Lucifer’s wearing him to the prom. Your words,” he added, and Dean froze.

_“So Lucifer’s wearing you to the prom?”_

That was true. He had said that to Sam over the phone back in his own time.

“Why would he do that?” he whispered, his voice shaking, betraying how unnerved he was at the entire situation. His doppelganger shrugged.

“Wish I knew. But now we don’t have a choice. It’s in him, and it’s not getting out. And you need to see it – the whole damn thing, how bad it gets – so that you can do it different.”

#~+~#

Castiel popped a couple of pills with one hand, keeping the other firmly on the wheel. Dean reached over and pulled the bottle out of his hand. “Let me see those.”

“You want some?” Castiel offered.

Dean rolled the bottle in his hand until he could read the label. “Amphetamines?” _Really?_

Castiel just smiled. “It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe.”

“Mm,” Dean hummed, his lips pressed together. “Don’t get me wrong, Cas. I, uh, I’m happy that the stick is out of your ass, but… what’s going on? With the drugs and the orgies and the love-guru crap?”

Castiel laughed, and it was a genuine laugh, but it was laced with undertones of bitterness. Dean had noticed that earlier, too. Maybe that was just how it was now – nothing could be good just for the sake of being good. Everything was tinged with pain.

“What’s so funny?”

Castiel glanced at him. “Dean, I’m not an angel anymore.”

Dean felt the whole world tilt. “What?”

“Yeah, I went mortal,” Castiel confirmed, not sounding too troubled over it.

“What do you mean? How?”

“I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving. But when they bailed, my mojo just kind of…” he did a little airplane motion with one hand and made a sound like high-pressure air being slowly released from a balloon. “Drained away. And now, you know, I’m practically human. I mean, Dean, I’m all but useless. Last year, broke my foot – laid up for two months.”

“Wow,” said Dean. It was all he could seem to come up with to say.

“Yeah,” Castiel murmured, sounding subdued.

“So you’re human now. Well, welcome to the club.”

“Thanks,” Castiel replied, but it sounded fake. “Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I’m powerless. I’m hapless, I’m hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence? It’s the end, baby! That’s what decadence is for! Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out?” He paused briefly, and his expression went a little blanker. “But then that’s, that’s just how I roll.”

Dean took a deep breath and stared out the windshield. He didn’t know who this Future Castiel was, but he wasn’t Dean’s friend, and he wasn’t someone Dean really wanted to be around for much longer.

#~+~#

“There. Second-floor window. We go in there,” Chitaqua Dean told his soldiers.

“You sure about this?” asked Risa.

“They’ll never see us coming. Trust me. Now, weapons check. We’re on the move in five.”

“Hey, uh. Me. Can I talk to you for a sec?” Dean asked 2014 Dean after hearing his ridiculous plan. His clone walked over to the side with him.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he commanded.

“What?” Future Dean asked.

“I know you. You’re lying to these people, and to me.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah,” Dean told him. “See, I know your lying expressions. I’ve seen them in the mirror. Now, there’s something you’re not telling us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Other Dean insisted.

“Oh, really? Well, I don’t seem to be the only member of your posse with some questions, so maybe I’ll just take my doubts over to them.” Dean moved to turn back toward the group and his doppelganger grabbed his shoulder.

“Okay, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. Wait.”

“What?” Dean asked impatiently.

“Take a look around you, man. This place should be white-hot with Crotes. So where are they?”

Dean glanced around. “They cleared a path for us,” he realized aloud. “Which means this is-”

“A trap. Exactly,” Future Dean finished for him.

“Well, then we can’t go through the front,” Dean told him.

“Oh, we’re not. They are. They’re the decoys. You and me, we’re going in through the back.”

Dean started. “You mean you’re gonna feed your friends into a meat grinder? Cas, too?” He let the look in his eyes convey the subtext of that. _Because we both know Cas isn’t _just _your friend._ “You want to use their deaths as a diversion?”

The look-alike he was staring at glance away from his withering gaze, and holy shit that was answer enough for Dean.

“Oh, man, something is broken in you,” Dean told him. “You’re making decisions I’d never make. I would _never_ sacrifice my friends.”

“Yeah, you’re right, you wouldn’t. It’s one of the reasons we’re in this mess, actually,” Other Dean shot back.

“These people count on you. They trust you!”

“They trust me to kill the devil and save the world and that’s _exactly_ what I’m gonna do.”

“No,” Dean muttered. “Not like this you’re not. I’m not gonna let you.”

“Oh yeah?” Future Dean demanded. Before Dean could respond, he had been punched in the face. He went down on the ground and his vision went black.

#~+~#

When he came around, everyone was gone. His head was pounding, his ears were ringing, and the entire world looked as if it were on fire.

He stumbled into the courtyard and there was Sam-that-wasn’t-really-Sam, with his foot on Future Dean’s neck.

Everything sort of blurred together after that – probably a result of the concussion. He vaguely remembered screaming a big, fat “fuck you” at Satan riding his brother’s body.

Besides that, it was all one big blob of whiteness and fire.

And then he woke up back in his motel room.

Zachariah was behind him, and he turned to look at the angel.

“Oh, well if it isn’t the ghost of Christmas screw you.”

“Enough,” Zach pleaded. “Dean, enough. You saw it, right? You saw what happens. You’re the only person who can prove the devil wrong. Just say yes.”

“How do I know this isn’t just another one of your tricks, huh?” Dean demanded. “Some more angel hocus-pocus?”

“The time for tricks is over,” Zachariah replied unconvincingly. “Give yourself to Michael. Say yes and we can strike. Before Lucifer gets to Sam. Before billions die.”

Dean pretended to consider it for a second, then answered, “nah.”

“‘Nah’? You telling me you haven’t learned your lesson?”

Dean took a step forward, his voice dropping a little lower. “Oh, I learned a lesson alright. Just not the one you wanted to teach.”

“Well I’ll just have to teach it again!” the angel shouted. “Because I’ve got you now, boy, and I’m never letting you-”

He disappeared.

The entire room, actually, disappeared, and suddenly all Dean could see was an empty stretch of road in the middle of the night.

He turned around and there he was, in all his glory. Five feet eleven inches of juiced-up, trenchcoated angel. Dean fought the urge to hug him.

“That’s pretty nice timing, Cas,” he muttered, unable to stop the grin from creeping across his face.

“We had an appointment,” Cas replied, wearing a matching smile.

_Well, fuck_, Dean thought.

He reached out and put one hand on Cas’ shoulder. “Don’t ever change,” he told him with conviction.

_Because I’ve seen what you might become, and I hated it. Because you’re perfect just like this, and I am in love with you._

_I love you._

**Author's Note:**

> Comment if you can find the parts that were copy-pasted out of Tried and Failed!
> 
> Love,  
-Sil


End file.
